Amazing and Unique Louisville Museum/Hotel

It’s been awhile since I posted, and this is somewhat unrelated to the overall blog theme, but Jenny and I are on a cross-country trip to Denver before I start my internship next Monday (a week from tomorrow) and we found an unbelievable place in Louisville I wanted to share. I guess it is related to the blog, as what I’m sharing is an innovative re-visioning of two well-known spaces: museums and hotels.

We left Charlottesville Saturday morning, and are leisurely crawling through the South, stopping at random roadside attractions and enjoying the scenery along the way. Our days are Charlottesville – Charleston WV, Charleston – Louisville KY, Louisville- St. Louis MO; St. Louis – Kansas City, KS; KC- Denver. All of those are short (250-300mi) except the last one which is around 650.If you want more details on the fun roadside attractions we find on the way, you can follow us on twitter for pics and updates.

We’re staying in a Louisville hotel called”21C”, a 90 room hotel with over 5000 square feet of hotel space filled with contemporary artists of the 21st Century. The museum and hotel are integrated- you need a key to access the elevator for room floors, but they have some additional artwork and the lobby and two floors are open to the public.

It’s pretty incredible here. We took video of one amazing interactive installation and numerous pictures of cool artwork. We’ve put some of that up for you below.

I love cool ideas like this- this feels like so much more than a hotel because you expect – and they deliver!- something new around every corner. Pretty fantastic, and we’ve enjoyed the rest of the city as well.

Video: “Text Rain” by Camille Utterback & Romy Achituv: On the lobby floor, in front of the elevators to the rooms, there’s an interactive screen that lets you stand in front of it and move- as you move, letters that are falling on the screen are affected by your body movements. Watch! (sorry for operator error- I forgot I was on a camera, not an iPhone and the screen didn’t tilt to match when I turned it!):

And here’s some of the amazing art- a lot of which was from local artists!

Are you my new friend?

A scissors chandelier!

Random steam puffer thing in the basement, visible from street

(by Alain Declercq) Bullets were fired at a black sheet to make this...the outline is from bullet holes!